In January 2012, San Francisco mom Kayla Wu moved her MI kid LiLi to Beijing to experience real immersion

23 May 2014

Saying goodbye to MI

Next week is
LiLi’s last week at her Mandarin Immersion public elementary school in San
Francisco.

To continue Mandarin Immersion into middle school
there are very few choices in San Francisco.The public middle school that both Mandarin Immersion elementary schools
feed into carries the Mandarin forward but at a huge cost:electives.SFUSD has decided that the kids will not have access to the traditional
middle school electives since it is during that period the Mandarin will take
place. The school is also huge, over
1100 kids in three grades.There’s one established private that has MI too,
and at least one other smaller private newish on the scene.

Since the established MI private wasn’t for us,
like many parents I had to decide between sending LiLi to the this large middle
that carries forward the Mandarin but offers no electives or putting her in a smaller
all-day-in-English school.I chose the latter.

I’ll supplement the Chinese, hire a caregiver who
speaks only Chinese, and continue to spend summers in China.